My Church Gig

 I’m mourning the end of Battlestar Galactica.  We used to hang out Friday nights so tonight feels especially empty.

So who’s the guy in the tub?  That’s Anders in a scene that was especially meaningful to me.  For the monologue, not the tub.  Anders has a flashback to an interview when he was a sports star.  Lady asks if he’d consider his career incomplete if his team never won a championship.  Dude replies in stunning clarity why he’s not in it for the win.

Here’s a clip.

Some of the script loosely transcribed:

Look, you wanna know the truth?  I don’t really care about the stats or the cup or the trophy or anything like that … in fact the game’s not that important to me, not really.  What matters to me is the perfect throw, okay? Making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block.  It’s perfection. That’s what it’s about.  It’s about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation, the beauty of physics, the wonder of mathematics, you know?  The, the elation of action and reaction, and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to.

Do you feel this way about anything you do?  I feel it in just about everything I get involved in.  I notice that most people don’t.  That doesn’t make anyone better than anyone else; just differently gifted.  A lot of my friends share the same sentiment and passion in their jobs and artistic endeavors.

There is a certain perfection, beauty, and wonder that can be found in anything we do; sports, visual art, music, programming, design… mixing worship.  People might see your passion, mistake it for perfectionism then get confused when you don’t nit-pick the details.  What you’re looking for are moments of elation; addictive moments when you feel connected to something deeper, greater, and invisible that has nothing and everything to do with you’re doing all at the same time.  I crave those moments of Godly Zen when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There have been many moments at Cornerstone when the chemistry on stage was perfect, the faders seemed to have moved themselves under my fingers, and the payoff of a chorus or bridge sounded so good I wanted to pee my pants.  Even more stunning are those same kinds of moments when the congregation sings out, the music and voices blend in the air, you swear you hear angels in the overtones, and you feel the presence of God himself.  That’s usually when I want to crap my pants.

Really spiritual types love to point out that those moments have nothing to do with the band, the worship leader, the sound system, the mix… because they are spiritual and transcendent.  On one hand you’re right to think so.  On the other hand you’re really, really wrong too.  The worship leader, the guitar player, the guy behind the console, the visuals on the screens – they can all absolutely ruin those moments or prevent them from ever happening.  If you’re using any sort of technology for worship it [darned] well does have something to do with the spiritual quality of the worship experience no matter how transcendent some moments are.

If you hang around a Cornerstone Thursday evening rehearsal you might think we’re all obsessed with perfection.  Band members practice songs for hours before rehearsals, rehearsals can even get nit-picky, and we spend the whole time dialing in the mix even to the point of asking players to change tones in sections.  After all that we remind everyone what kind of clothes work for video and what doesn’t.  And that’s just the band!  I won’t go into how hard the camera crew trains on Thursdays.  It’s ridiculous.  A fly on the wall might even consider our rehearsals to lack any real spiritual value.  Well, especially when said wall is pulsating with 105dB of 35Hz subsonic love.  Come on a Sunday and you’ll see the spiritual rewards of mundane, hard work.

With all of that said, I love the chemistry I have with the people I work with.  I often get to feel moments like Anders described.

The challenge I’m gonna put out there is this:  what habits, personal preferences, notions, style… what, if anything at all, do you have that prevents synergistic moments of worship happen in your situation?  Remember, great moments of worship want to happen.  If they’re not happening then something is preventing it.  It’s not about what you can add, like a bigger sound system; it’s about what obstacles you can remove.  Be brave enough to ask a brave friend what they think.  If you can think of anything like say, “my guitar tone is so frign awesome, I point my AC60 at the congregation so the sound guy can’t mess it up,” then cut it out.  Get with the Godly Zen and contribute to something greater than yourself.

Here’s a can of worms: volunteerism vs. quality. They are not always opposites but let’s be honest, if a church hires someone like a graphic artist it’s because they’re ready to pay for consistent quality not possible with volunteers.

I was hired seven years ago when our then portable church was cresting at 1600 attendees across 3 Sunday morning services. I believe that’s the critical mass at which volunteer dynamics change dramatically. The perceived need for quality in all areas grows because of your greater visibility in the community. You’re able to hire for positions you couldn’t afford when you were half the size. It’s also a phase of ecclesiastical puberty in which you look to larger churches for direction. You try on different personalities like Peter in the Brady Bunch episode, “The Personality Kid.” (Porkchopsh and appleshaushe…) God knows we’ve tried on a little Saddleback, a little Willow, and a little North Point in finding our own groove. It’s natural.

Cornerstone had just rolled out a new website with a custom content management system to make it easy for volunteers to update. It became clear that with a public website, our greater visibility required more in terms of quality and accountability than a volunteer team could provide. I was hired primarily as the webmaster and that allowed me to wear the audio engineer hat as well.

I offer this bit of personal history to preface this: I was not prepared for the bait-and-switch my new job handed me. The bait was being hired to do things I love to do (and do well) like mix a Sunday service. The switch was the responsibility for leadership, training and development of volunteer teams. I felt like a drive-by victim of the Peter Principle, promoted to the level of my incompetence. I failed miserably at team building in the early years and it’s still my weakest suit. The thing is with techs and artists, it’s hard to find a good leader and a good doer under the same batch of skin.

Nowadays, church staff members around the country are being laid off in droves and if you keep up with church-related blogs you’re in touch with the panicked rush back toward volunteerism. I got an email from a tech director at a church in Danville asking how we “do volunteers.” Just this morning at a geeky audio message board I frequent, a guy asked the same question to the world, “how do you train your volunteers?”

Hidden within these questions is a deeper question: “How do we train our volunteers to the level of quality and style we expected from our staff?” Some churches are accustomed to certain standards of excellence, and that’s fine because that same excellence is why many people started attending those churches. Cornerstone is no exception. I think of our excellent children’s ministries who have intentionally pushed back to a more volunteer driven model and are slowly seeing great results. It’s a whole new game and it looks like they’re winning. Many people started coming to church here because of our children’s ministry.

Anyway, I preach to myself a lot. Here’s what it sounds like lately…

In this climate, just doing your thing isn’t an option any more. You must become a good leader no matter what your Strength Finders test results tell you. That means you get to do what you love to do less, other people get to do what you love to do more, and you get to learn that people are more important than your sense of quality and style; all within limits of course. To be blunt, it’s just part of growing up. Step up or step aside.

This year I have consciously applied myself to becoming a better leader and I’ve discovered something I hope is helpful for other folks like me.

One of the greatest laws of the universe is this: If you want what other people have you have to do what they do. It’s that simple. You have to trade your old ideas for ideas that work. The hard part is pushing yourself to try something new. The simplicity lies in just doing what other leaders suggest to do.

Of all the leadership books out there today the one that resonates with me the most is “25 Ways to Win with People” by John Maxwell and Les Parrott. It contains short sections with examples of great leadership principles and action steps that are all based on being a good human being if not a good Christian. I hope to do as many of these things this year as I am able. The beauty is they’re simple enough for me to try.

If you find yourself doing something that feels terribly foreign, like writing personal thank-you cards to team members, remember that it doesn’t equate to insincerity just because it’s not your style. Putting your ego aside is always good practice, especially when it comes to team building and volunteer training. Who knows? Maybe we’ll all become better people for it.

I’d sure appreciate comments from anyone with suggestions for good leadership books – short, simple, and with clear action steps.

I get asked about podcasting a lot: how to record, how to edit, how to sweeten, how to compress, how to set up a feed… There’s a lot to it if you want to do it well. If you Google around you’ll find some great resources and it’s easy enough to figure out.

We moved our website to another server this week. Last time we did that (a couple years ago) moving our Podcast RSS feed was a big pain. (The RSS feed is just a shopping list your iTunes checks occasionally to see if there’s anything new to download.) So last time I set up a Feedburner feed in anticipation of ever having to go through it again. I’m pretty thankful to my past self right now for one of the few favors that guy ever did me. By the way, be kind to your future selves. They’ll need all the help they can get. They’ll love you for it.

Feedburner’s free features (like stats) are mindbottling enough but the real beauty for me is that it acts as a proxy feed. Once people subscribe to the Feedburner feed you can move your original feed anywhere without losing subscribers. That’s important because we care very much about quality and, really, we don’t have time to field support calls and emails from hundreds of subscribers having podcast trouble all at once. Also, if your feed goes MIA for too long the iTunes store will drop it. There are ways to move your feed with iTunes (using the tag and pinging iTunes) but it doesn’t work as well or as quickly as you’d hope.

So, no matter where you set up your podcast set up a Feedburner account right after you get your base feed going. I recommend this even if you are using a hosted solution like GoDaddy, Podbean, MySpace or whatever. Burn that feed.

I’ll post more about podcasting in the future but if you have any questions or need advice don’t hesitate to email me: just ’sam’ at this website url.

Screen shots and stats after the jump for anyone interested. Read the rest of this entry »

This week I’d like to offer my opinions (not necessarily reviews) about some mics like the KSM9, KMS105, E965 and others just to add my own voice to the crowd.  When you’re considering spending $700 each on microphones it’s good to get as much information as you can as well as take a few for a test drive.

My friend Masaki owns One Way Media Solutions and for the last several months he let me borrow a bunch of high end mics just for the heck of it. I tried them each on at least two people to get a good feel for them.

Keep in mind that a great singer will sound great on any mic the same way a super awesome guitar player can pick up my guitar and make me think, “I was going to sell that? It sounds great!” After spending time with our vocalists at a Vocal Artistry seminar we hosted I was stunned to learn that I have tried to fix poor singing style with expensive mics. That’s another topic. I’m just saying expensive mics are not solutions for vocal troubles.  They’re just the secret sauce for good vocalists.

The mics I’ll list are (except for a couple) around $700 on the street. If a $100 Shure SM58 is a tool in the tool chest, these mics are more like expressive instruments. Great vocalists play their instruments well. Putting a sensitive, responsive mic in the hands of a not-so-great performer could backfire a little so beware.

Also, my views are colored by my goal with our worship mix. If I were out on the road with a band I’d have different things to say. My personal goal is to come as close as possible to the sound of a worship CD. Average worship CD vocals are smooth, even, fresh, and clear; not in your face.  Also, I’m mixing on an Innovason SY80 (a very bright console) and Nexo Geo line arrays with the 8″ mid drivers (very bright as well.)

In any case, I hope these thoughts are helpful to anyone at a church considering  a leap into the world of greater than $600 microphone love.

Mics after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »